What the OP has alluded to was that sometimes you just like the people you work with, and if you are in a situation with long hours and hard work, for some people it's more efficient to endure that in person and not in isolation, and it's not always a BS manager thing. Whether you choose for some reason to cling to those people, or fully realize that this is a team that gets together to get shit done, not a family, is a completely separate issue.

I don't think it was only this, but I agree this can be much better than in isolation. You just don't want your work and your work-social life to encompass all of your time. It's just not that important no matter how much your Saas is going to change the world.

I mean, nothing is stopping you from making friends outside of work too though. It’s just another avenue for socializing. WFH though means that socializing is likely completely off the table. Fine if you’re not into it - sucks a lot if you are. I really miss lunches with my coworkers. It was almost always the highlight of my day - if I didn’t do anything else after work.

Often times the feeling of pseudo-social life and working too much are some of the things stopping you from doing this. Then maybe a pandemic happens and you realize that all those people were doing the exact same thing, and there's no neutral substance to your friendship. For this reason, I always recommend meeting the friends of people at work. They're relatively neutral, and you only rely on your work connections as a jumping off point.

WFH means you can do other shit more easily because you have more time available to go to the gym, cafe, walking around, party etc..

Not to say that friends made at work cannot be friends, but all it takes is a trivial severance of that to reveal how close that connection was.

> For this reason, I always recommend meeting the friends of people at work. They're relatively neutral, and you only rely on your work connections as a jumping off point.

That's an interesting approach - how do you even do that though?

Honestly - WFH isn't much more time liberating for myself. Any amount of commute time I had (which was never very much - always under 20min each way, closer to 10min) was taken over by extra work demands or blurring separation of lines. On top of that - there's no happy hours, fun lunches, or what not now because WFH.

And I agree - but I guess what I'm saying is... You don't need lasting friendships for socializing to be enjoyable. Situational socializing can still be fun and it doesn't have to be this thing where you are going to have these people be your best man at your wedding.

> Situational socializing can still be fun and it doesn't have to be this thing where you are going to have these people be your best man at your wedding.

Absolutely agree. This is why I mean more specifically that this shouldn't be relied upon entirely. If you stop being in the office, and your social life goes away, then maybe too much is coming from your work social life, whereas my opinion is just that it should be an augment. You may not need your casual work buddies to come to your wedding, but you probably want someone to come to your wedding, and it probably needs to come from somewhere else.

It's just a common thing I've heard—from particularly 9 to 5, somewhat more socially anxious people—that they have no idea how to make friends now that they realize their work friends don't necessarily want to go have a picnic. Work tends to usurp their personal lives in this sense, though I don't necessarily mean it to be so dramatic.

> That's an interesting approach - how do you even do that though?

It takes time and breadth. It's probably a better idea in general to just meet people through other means, but the big thing is simply forming enough of a connection with a small subset of your colleagues that they'd invite you to a party or something, then you might get to meet some other people, of which a small subset of those will vibe well enough with you.

It's just like meeting the friends of your current friends in that if they move away, you have redundancy. You wouldn't want 10/11 of your social group dependent on that one person you met them through, but that one person might give you exposure to the other 10. Ideally you get to a point with the other 10 where you'd invite them regardless of your first friend's availability.

Well, now I manage to have lunch with my wife every day. I prefer that.

> Your work goes away for any reason, and so does your social life.

Sure, as can be true after leaving school or moving away from family. Reason enough to always foster the skill of both making and keeping friends.

Totally agreed. If your only friends are highschool buddies, then you'll likely never leave your hometown.

I'm still regularly meeting up with a group of ex-colleagues from a company I left 5 years ago

It can happen. Certainly if you did quite a lot of other things outside of work. It's just not necessarily a safe BET imo. If you live right next to them, or you became drinking buddies that talk about thingds other than the current project you're both working on, you stand a higher chance. If the only thing tying you together is your company though, it's going to be pretty vulnerable.

alluded*